Surface of Phobos

courtesy the Mars Express

(what causes the grooves?)

Longmont Astronomy Society Newsletter

March 2010

From the President:

Our meeting this month is Thursday night, March 18th, at the IHop Resturaunt, 2040

Ken Pratt Blvd., Longmont, CO. Please join us for dinner (around 6) before the meeting.

The general meeting will begin at 7 pm. The speaker will be LAS member, Bill

Possel. Bill is the Mission Operations and Data Systems director for CU's Laboratory for

Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). He will talk about the Kepler mission's

research and findings and the upcoming orbital Mars Atmosphere Volatile Atmosphere

mission (MAVEN). Following Bill's presentation I'll talk about the Observing Site

Committe proposal for an 'All Sky Meteor Camera' project.

Scopes and volunteers will be needed this Friday, March 19 for the Skyline High

School star party at the south shelter at the Sandstone Ranch. The school star party next

month will be for Mead High School on Friday April 23rd.

In the sky this month:

Meteor Showers – no major ones in March, next up is the Lyrids on April 21.

Planets

Mercury:still too close to the Sun, improving as an evening star and best viewing about

April 8.

Venus: Low in the west at sunset and improving nightly. Best viewing still to come

around June 1.

Mars: south at nightfall, declining

Jupiter: far side of the Sun, just beginning to be visible at sunrise

Saturn:rising at sunset, the rings are beginning to open, prime time to view

Interesting Stars/Galaxies

March 20 – the Moon is right next to the Pleiades, and a great binocular sight

Club Calendar:

March 19 – scopes and volunteers for Skyline HS star party at Sandstone Ranch (south

shelter on the top of the hill). Enter by the Chevy dealer and keep climbing...

March meeting: March 18 at the IHOP. Meeting at 7, dinner on your own prior

April meeting: April 15 at the IHOP. Meeting at 7, etc. Get those taxes done before the

meeting...

April star party at Mead High School (pretty dark site out aways) April 23rd.

Lights out – the Fourth Annual Earth Hour will be March 27th, from 8:30 to 9:30 local

time. Over 80 million Americans participated last year, and nearly a billion worldwide.

Just turn your lights out! And being in the astronomy club, you can then go outside and

look at the stars in a darker sky....

Nova Astronomy program: April 6 and 13 – “Hunting the Edge of space” Part history of

astronomy and part rumination on the vastness of the universe. A simulated image shows

Jupiter the way Galileo would have seen it. A visit to the mirror grinding lab in Arizona.

Everybody watched the “Pluto Files” with Neil DeGrasse Tyson this week, right?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ for the details. You knew that you can watch the old

shows online, right? All the way back to 1996! Just click on the left “archive” menu

there.

Fiske Planetarium:

Fri March 19 – Mars Revealed

Explore Mars from a new perspective with panoramas and vistas from the Mars

Exploration Rovers as well as orbital spacecraft. This show features the latest discoveries

and analysis from Mars.

Fri April 2 – Pseudo Science, with Dr Doug Duncan

Fri April 9 – Science of the Moon

Fri April 16 – Aboringinal Skies

Fri April 23 - City of Stars

Sat April 24 – Astronomy Day Open House at Fiske, noon to 10 PM

prizes, games, giveaways

Internet Resources:

Discovering Planets Beyond Hundreds of planets and counting. Astronomers are finding new worlds beyondour solar system at an unrelenting pace. But even after they're discovered, thesefar-off planets are cloaked in mystery. Most of them we can't even see.

How does the Hubble Space Telescope help to unveil the secrets of these alienworlds?

Explore a new feature on Hubblesite where you can watch videos and investigateHubble's discoveries about solar systems other than our own. Visit DiscoveringPlanets Beyond.

The projects encompassed by Astrosphere New Media include the 365 Days of

Astronomy podcast, Astronomy 2009 Island in S econd Life , the popular Astronomy Cast

podcast and a new project for 2010, We Are Astronomers. Additionally, Astrosphere

will be hosting the archival websites from the US IYA.

http://www.astrosphere.org/featured/astrosphere-to-help-sustain-iya-legacy-projects/ for

the details as the International Year of Astronomy winds down.

This month’s field trip:

Upcoming Space Missions:

The WISE probe (by Ball Aerospace) is up and has released its first pictures in the

Infrared region. Check out the pics at http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html Love that

Andromeda picture – you can clearly see the disruption from a past collision.

This month’s Wacky Idea:

http://solarstormwatch.com/ You can sign up to help monitor solar storms. I think the

idea here is to sit around watching live video of the Sun and call up if something is

exploding. If you don't have a life, then “This is for YOU!”

Humor Dept:

Does this mean that we live longer?

The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth's

rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday.

The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and

should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to

research scientist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis," NASA officials

said in a Monday update.

The computer model used by Gross and his colleagues to determine the effects of the

Chile earthquake effect also found that it should have moved Earth's figure axis by about

3 inches (8 cm or 27 milliarcseconds).

The Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis, which it spins around once

every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kph).

This amount of change is undetectable, of course..... but that's what the models predict!

Audio Dept:

A new section for the newsletter – the audio department!

http://spitzer.caltech.edu/video-audio/1047-irastroHD019-Spitzer-Space-Telescope-The-

Musical-HD- try this, turn the sound up, and learn about the Spitzer Infrared Telescope.

I'm embarrassed to admit I listened to this. Maybe put it on the IPOD, listen while

observing?

Cool Stuff:

The Solar Dynamics Observatory lifted off Thursday 2/17 on a first-of-a-kind mission to

reveal the Sun's inner workings.

During the launch, the SDO went roaring through a cloud layer and destroyed a sundog

that was present! Watch the video at

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/images/coolmovie/anna-herbst1.mov

http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0949b/ Image by the vista satellite (European

Space Observatory) in the infrared. There's about a million stars in this picture, most of

them invisible in visible light. This image is a mosaic created from VISTA images taken

through Y, J and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The image is about 2

degrees by 1.5 degrees in extent. The total exposure time for this mosaic was only 80

seconds. Want to know how it work? You didn't listen to the rap, did you?

And a few images from the members:

Flame nebula from member Gary Garzone

Nearly as good picture of the Flame from the Vista scope

IC443 and IC444 with M35 and NGC2158 in the upper right corner

from member Brian Kimball

Andromeda from the WISE satellite. See the old collision relic on the left?